


The Peacock's Bride

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Canon Queer Character, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:31:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3518948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiranyavarman, King of Dasharna, gives his daughter in marriage to the son of his cousin Drupad, King of Panchal. Years later, Dasharni Uma offers up her story as a warning to her sister-in-law.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Peacock's Bride

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aureliano_B](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureliano_B/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, my darling.

On an auspicious day did my father Hiranyavarman the King of Dasharna, give me over in marriage to the Prince of Panchal, Shikhandi the Peacock of Kampilya, the son of his cousin Drupad. Long did the city resound with the chants of Brahmins, and shudder with the beating of drums half as big as any man. I was my father’s eldest daughter, and before me only my brother had brought a bride home, and the city had not had a taste of that wedding. Then too, my brother had been long away, learning statecraft and warcraft and consorting with other princes: for years before his marriage, the long decade of his _brahmacarya_ , the people had not seen him; his marriage heralded his return and for that they were happy, and for the arrival of the lovely stranger who might one day help rule them.

Me they had known the sixteen years of my life, and, O Lotus among women, the effusion of grief is greater than that of joy. Every house, every fortress in the city was ringed about with garlands. Girls sprinkled perfume on the roads, and fierce soldiers tied flowers to the haft of their spears. Beloved, feted, beautified, I felt as though some young god was to come to claim me from my father’s home. All night I could not sleep, for dreams of this man I had never met haunted me, and set my very skin afire with excitement.

In the morning my women woke me early and bathed me. They dried my hair with perfumed smoke, anointed my body with paste from the sandalwood tree, painted the tips of my fingers with henna, darkened my eyelashes, and reddened my mouth. They sprinkled powder ground from the bark of the mango tree and pomegranate on my skin, and garbed me in the garments of the bride. My hair was braided in its many knots and threaded through with many jewels. Then my mother, the splendid queen of Dasharna, veiled me with her own hands that were like the unfurled petals of the champaka flower, and led me to the _garbhagriha_ , the heart of the temple from which I would emerge a princess of Panchal, having entered it a princess of Dasharna.

There in the light of a thousand lamps, in the smoke of the sacred fire I first saw him, and my heart swelled within my tremulous breast and almost I stumbled. You may laugh, but Yajnasheni, though he is your brother and you have known him all your life, to me he was a stranger, then. A stranger and beautiful beyond the beauty of young men. Like a perfect sword in a splendid sheath he seemed to me, garbed in rich garments and clad in his silver armour, and with the immortal garland of lotuses disseminating heady fragrance about us all. He smiled at me, and I caught courage from him and smiled back, lifted my head to look into his eyes. While we were married he sat like a statue carved from the finest marble, veined with gold, impassive. It was I who was excited, shivering; when I put my hand in his he had to clasp it close to keep me still.

Ah, do not laugh. So will you too feel when your beloved first sets hands on you, and you, watched by knowing eyes, can glance at him only from beneath lowered lids. Such a time they took, to marry us. So long, so long, the verses unending. Better to have met him on a battlefield, or in a forest, or have written him a letter and had him abduct me, as Vaidarbhi Rukmini has done with his friend Krishn. Perhaps the perfume of those lotuses intoxicated me, as the mahua flower does the elephant so it dances forgetting its dignity, for I cannot recall when the rite ended, only how it felt to walk in his wake around the fire, to stop and step ahead of him.

We walked out of the temple into the dimming light of the setting sun. It limned us both, incarnadining me and making him shine silver, copper, gold, glancing off his armour and his jewels. Everywhere there was music, laughter, friends looping their arms around my neck in a last embrace, my father introducing me to my new family. Your father, Panchali, I had met before, for my father and yours were friends since the days of their youth when they lived for a while in the house of their grandfather, and the lion of Panchal filled the eye as formidably as ever he has done. To Prishata my mother-in-law, too, I paid obeisance and embraced, and felt for a moment as though I had not one mother, but two, both queens and both glorious, beloved of their husbands and of their people. Yet, and oh it fills me still with shame to confess this, O my Manasvini Panchali, though I looked into your lotus face and kissed your forehead as a good sister ought, yet I did not remember you, and to meet you in the palace in Kampilya on the morning of that terrible day was to meet a stranger. So full were my eyes of your brother’s beauty, so full was my heart with love of him.

We did not linger long, but rode soon, with Aditya in his chariot, towards Panchal in the west. You yourself, Draupadi and your twin the golden prince Draupad, looked like the sun and his shadow in your chariot, and your parents in theirs were accompanied by the royal household in adorned chariots and on glorious horses, their hooves beating time to my heart. O, my heart thundering, quaking in my breast, as I sat beside your brother in our chariot. I was brimming over, for the joy I felt in being by him was tainted by the sorrow of leaving home, my mother’s love and the shadow of my father’s protection. You shall know, soon, how terrible it is, the fate of every woman, who is rend from one family and must shape herself to the whims of another. Yet as my joy dimmed and I hid my face within my veil to shed my tears in secret, his hand was on my arm and then he touched my chin and looked well at my face, the veil falling back till it covered only my jeweled hair, and he smiled at me and dried my eyes. He was gentle. It is not what one expects of young men, for they are full of strength and often forget that a bride must not be touched as a courtesan is, and my mother and my sister-in-law had told me that I could not think that a _kshatriya_ prince in the blossoming of his strength would be careful of me as my women were. Ought I have known then? Yet he was a warrior, not vast like his father or mine, but a slim young man beautiful as a young tree standing proud and gracing a forest, and his eyes were pools to drown love in, and his mouth was shaped like Kaamdev’s arching bow.

When you are angry, Draupadi, your skin heats like the petals of the _aparajita_ flower, and your breath comes quickly, shaking the tendrils of your hair. Yet calm your fire, Parshati, for it is terrible that a bride should be so deceived as I was, pulled from her father’s home with false promises, and then find that her husband is not who she thought, that the one who ought to protect her is one who has beguiled her. I say to you, Panchali, that grievous wrong was done to me, by your father, your mother, your brother. O, do not be angry. I was a girl then, of sixteen summers, as you are now, not ignorant but young, and my heart was blossoming with love as a flower at the touch of the sun. And your brother I had installed already in my heart as its lord. What devotee likes, on meeting her lord, to find fallible humanity? We had been shut into our chambers, and the night-blooming flowers were heady upon the air. Before the wide bed of rosewood, hung about with silk, in the light of the burnished lamps he undressed me, my skin heating with shame, and told me I was beautiful in his eyes. Then he turned grave, a warrior where a moment before he had been my smiling lover, and told me his secret. I took it for a joke, told in a strange attempt to ease my apprehension. A woman, he, when his arms about me were corded with muscle as an archer’s are, and beneath the garland my hand lay on a muscled chest? I laughed at him, and slowly turned from disbelieving to desperate. Under his garments were a woman’s parts, the shaven _bhaga_ giving the lie to his warrior’s body. You would not be angry, Yajnasheni, had you seen how I wept.

In the morning he was gone. The men who had followed me from my father’s home took a message with them to Dasharna, and the rest is known to you, my sister. Yet do not think that when he returned, a man in truth and endowed with the yaksh Sthunakarn’s parts, do not think that I was pleased as swiftly as the courtesan’s my father sent ahead of his army. For, O Krishna, the trust between a bride and her lord is a fragile thing, and once broken not easily mended. You yourself saw, for you were of an age to understand, you and Draupad Dhrishtadyumn, though your brothers were too young, you saw how it took a turning of the seasons before I became his bride in truth, and longer yet till I bore him a child.

So, O Shyama, when you wed, be careful of your heart, be careful with your trust, for to be deceived by one’s husband leaves a scar that mars the beauty of the marriage as boiling oil mars the skin of any maiden, be she ever so fair.


End file.
